Mention Calcutta and Tabus face will invariably light up. The actresss bond with the city which started when she was shooting films like Abar Aranye and The Namesake and has continued till the day, has only grown stronger over the years. Last Saturday, the 48-year-old stunner was back in the city as the star speaker at Breaking Stereotypes at Infocomm 2019, an ABP initiative, at ITC Sonar. Before that, The Telegraph caught up with Tabu statuesque in forest-green shirt and black skirt in her ITC Sonar suite, when she spoke on her love for Calcutta, reconnecting with Mira Nair and finding a suitable boy!

We had last met in May, in the peak of summer in Calcutta, and you had mentioned how you cant wait to come back in winter, because that means foggy morning walks, draping thick shawls and feasting on nolen gur. So here you are!

(Laughs) Oh, yes! My god! Uss waqt kuch aur bhi maangti toh mil jaata (laughs). But I am glad I have managed to come here at this time of the year

So did you manage to tick off anything from your winter bucket list this time?

Kahaan, yaar? I flew in this morning and I am flying out tonight by an unearthly 2am flight (rolls her eyes). I am going to Lucknow to shoot for A Suitable Boy. So, this time, unfortunately I wont have any time to do anything. But I am glad I am getting the evening to myself, which is a huge thing for me (smiles).

So no going out for nolen gur?

Thats coming to me! (Laughs) I dont have to go anywhere. I have my contacts (winks and laughs) sab ek ghante mein maine fix kar liya hai. Whenever I come to Calcutta, one thing that I carry without fail is my big icebox. I always have to take back many things staples are nolen gur, mishti doi and gondhoraj lebu. Yeh teen toh hone hi hai list mein nahin toh Calcutta aane ka kya fayda? (Laughs)

It was apparently shooting for Goutam Ghoses Abar Aranye many years ago that made you start eating fish. Is that right?

Absolutely! I had turned vegetarian for many years. We were shooting in some jungles in Bengal for Abar Aranye, with Goutamda. The only diet that we got there for days was rice and fish curry and gulab jamun (laughs). As a child, I loved eating fish I would practically eat it every day but I gave it up for many years. After that shoot, I started eating fish again every day for life! (Laughs) Of course, I eat the maximum amount of fish when I am in Calcutta, at my friends place and her mothers place. I dont eat fish outside I prefer the homemade stuff. So Calcutta gave me back my fish (laughs).

We know your visits, if not on work, are limited to being with friends and family. Any favourite haunts whenever you come here?

I love going on drives here. I love to go to those little-little galis, do shopping there are some really cool boutiques really nice and intimate. I can go in there and shop aaram se without being bothered. Then, of course, my friends place and her mothers place are my favourites. Their terraces are our favourite spots at night. I think the familiarity is so much that I find myself at home almost everywhere in Calcutta (smiles).

In fact, I came here for Durga Puja in October. I just sneaked in to my friends place and no one knew (laughs). It was lovely to see the city dressed up like a bride in all its finery. It was so beautiful.

You can either like the carnival-like atmosphere or completely hate it

I toh love it! Also because I think I am used to it in Bombay this carnival-like atmosphere every few months! (Laughs) Something or the other is always happening on the roads there, so I think I have just got used to it. Awaaz, shor, lights sab ki aadaat ho gayi hai, you know.

See, every experience I have in Calcutta whether its for shoots, like when I shot The Namesake or personal visits will always be special because of the connect I have with the city. Abar Aranye was the time when I made all these friends I have today. I learnt Bangla, I dubbed for the film in Bangla. When I did The Namesake, I was a little more established in the system because I already had these friends. Chaiti (Ghoshal, actress) and the other friends I have here really helped me learn the culture.

Shooting at the Howrah station was an experience in itself north Calcutta you just spoke about chaos and carnival (smiles). I loved shooting at the flower market, which I hadnt been to before. And from that shoot, I would always go home so it never felt like I was in a city that isnt essentially my home. I once stayed at the Tollygunge Club I am a member.

Calcutta will always be a different experience for anyone who comes from outside by virtue of having the strong character that it does. It has a feel thats removed from your usual cosmopolitan city experience. For me, this city has never ever been a light or a frivolous experience like going to a city and coming back. For me, its always been much, much more coming here. I can safely say that anyone who comes to Calcutta goes back with a certain kind of effect and impact, whatever that is. I, of course, also go back with nolen gur and gondhoraj! (Laughs out loud)

Maybe its time to make Calcutta your home for a few months every year?

Oh, I am totally ready to! Maybe buy a nice apartment and chill during winter! (Laughs) I must tell you that I love the champa thats always in season... for me, it defines the city. Of course, every time I come here, I see a huge change theres a lot of infrastructural development. We are all resistant to change, but its inevitable (smiles).

You had also told us last time that you keep telling Prosenjit that you want to do a film with him. Any progress on that front?

Arre, hes not listening to me no one is listening to me! (Laughs) I only come for events all through the year, and never for a movie. Its time I did a Bangla film high time!

You just mentioned The Namesake and you are shooting again with Mira Nair for A Suitable Boy. Did you two pick up from where you left off?

Its always so wonderful reconnecting with Mira. I think everyone who is connected with Mira has that equation with her you just pick up from where you left, no matter how many years have passed in between. She forms really informal, impactful and strong bonds with people. She keeps working with the people shes worked with earlier, and I think thats a beautiful quality to be able to form such bonds in todays world. I feel a sense of belonging whenever I work with her and her unit.

In A Suitable Boy, we have Ram Kapoor, Vijay Raaz who have worked with Mira in Monsoon Wedding I have worked with her in The Namesake so its always wonderful, you know that sense of comfort and going back you dont get that with everyone. Of course, everyone knows about the aesthetics and the quality of work that she guarantees as a filmmaker. Its all her own, and theres no denying that.

So whos a suitable boy for Tabu?

Boy?! (Laughs out loud) Woh din gaye! Chalo, main abhi boy dhoondne nikalti hoon.

Arent all men essentially boys?

Thats very, very true! (Laughs) And I think I will always be a girl boy meets girl pata nahin woh main kaise handle karungi!

You recently posted on social media about Chandni Bar turning 18. In a sea of very challenging turns, would you pick that as the role that challenged you the most?

Chandni Bar was actually a lot of fun to shoot, though it made for a heavy viewing experience. In hindsight, I feel that if the experience wasnt light, then the process of shooting it would have killed us. But thanks to Madhur (Bhandarkar, the films director), every experience turns out to be light. The subject was very dark and there was no other way to portray it that was the truth of her (Mumtazs) life. I think its one of the landmark films in my career (Tabu won a National Award for Chandni Bar). It uncovered a part of reality that I wasnt exposed to and I am glad I was part of a film like that... a film where you saw a beer bar dancer as a protagonist and not just as the villains moll or the heros pining love interest (smiles).

Visit link:
Tabu on her suitable boy - Telegraph India

Chicago has a slew of new or upcoming bike and pedestrian bridges, including architecturally interesting spans over Lake Shore Drive at 35th Street, 41st Street, and 43rd Street (upcoming); the partially completed Navy Pier Flyover; and the nearly finished Lincoln Village Bridge, aka the (Berny) Stone Bridge.One of the most interesting is the Riverview Bridge, which opened without fanfare last month on the North Branch of the Chicago River on the border of the Avondale, Irving Park, and North Center community areas. Named for the storied amusement park that used to stand at the northwest corner of Belmont and Western, its the longest bike/ped river bridge in the city, at more than 1,000 feet long and 16 feet wide. The new causeways southern terminus is the east bank of the river at Clark Park, the green space between Belmont Avenue and Addison Street, just west of Lane Tech high school.

Like much of recent Chicago sustainable transportation infrastructure, the new span seems to follow the citys When in doubt go with somethingSantiago Calatrava-esque design philosophy. See also theLoop LinkandUnion Station Transit Center bus shelters, as well as the Washington-Wabash L station all of which are vaguely reminiscent of whale vertebrae.

The bridge passes under the Addison vehicular bridge and crosses the river to the west bank in a serpentine manner at an elevation of more than 18 feet to allow recreational boaters to pass underneath. The northern terminus of the span is in California Park, which includes the McFetridge Sports Center, just south of Grace Street.

As it stands, the simplest way to access the bridge from the north is to take a park path east from California Avenue, just south of the California Park basketball courts.

From the south, you can access the north-south bike path in Clark Park from a ramp on the North Side of Belmont just east of the river and take the path north to the Riverview Bridge. Note that this four-lane stretch of Belmont isnt particularly bike-friendly, because the CTA pushed back against a plan for a road diet with bike lanes here. I also wouldnt recommend crossing north on Belmont to the ramp from Rockwell Street if youre not a confident urban cyclist, since its located at the top of a small hill where its tricky to see oncoming motorized traffic.

The map Ive created to the right shows reasonably bikeable streets for heading to and from the bridge, plus the off-street paths it connects with. Click here to view the Google Map version if you need the street names. As it stands, the Riverview Bridge is handiest for people traveling northwest or southeast.

For example, if you like in Albany Park and work downtown, in the morning you might access the bridge from California and Grace, take the path south through Clark Park and exit at Belmont, and then head east to the Clybourn bike lanes, which will take you several miles southeast towards the Loop. (Again, watch out while crossing Belmont at the path access ramp, or else take the lightly-traveled sidewalk east to Campbell Avenue, where you can safely cross Belmont with a stoplight.)

The city is currently working on an underbridge at busy Irving Park Road, due for completion in late 2020, which will allow you to connect between California Park and Horner Park, located on the west side of the river between Irving Park and Montrose Avenue. When thats finished, youll be able to walk, jog or bike all the way between Belmont and Montrose car-free. (There are park paths in Horner Park you can use to travel between Irving Park and Montrose.)

Thats about 1.5 miles, or more than half the length of the 2.7-mile Bloomingdale Trail, which will make the full route, which the city is calling the 312 RiverRun, a nice recreational amenity. And from Montrose you can take the Manor Avenue neighborhood greenway, a low-stress on-street route, to Lawrence Avenue. From there you can take the North Shore Channel Trail all the way to northern Evanston.

So its serendipitous that a developer is proposing to build 40 affordable apartments, plus six market-rate apartments at the Ruby Dry Cleaners site at Montrose and California, northwest of Horner Park. The proximity of the 312 RiverRun would be a great recreation and transportation amenity for the new residents. The developer will meet with neighbors December 16 at 7 p.m. at Horner Park Fieldhouse, 2741 W. Montrose Ave.

Read more here:
Take a virtual ride on the new Riverview bike/ped bridge - Streetsblog Chicago

A care home has been rated as good overall after an inspection was carried out by a health watchdog.

Oakleigh Residential Home, in Ashby Road, Moira, provides personal care to 23 people, some with physical health needs and others with dementia.

After the latest visit from inspectors from the Care Quality Commission on October 22 and 23, the home was rated as overall as good, with just one area that required improvement.

It was good for being effective, caring, responsive and well-led.

Inspectors did note that improvements should be carried out to some bedroom doors locks which were not suitable if there was an emergency when they would not be able to be opened quickly.

The inspector noted that training in infection control practices was adequate, although they recommended that improvements be made.

The report also stated that medicines were stored and administered safely and people were supported to have their medicines in a safe way. Recruitment checks had been carried out to ensure staff were suitable to work with people, said the report.

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Also noted was that staffing levels were adequate to provide individual support and good overall levels of care. Training for staff was linked to people's individual support needs, however, some training courses had yet to be planned and undertaken.

Other positives in the report noted that people were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests.

The policies and systems in the service supported this practice.

The staff team also told the inspector they felt involved in the running of the home and felt supported by the provider, registered manager and senior staff.

Staff had supervision to ensure they met people's needs and they responded to and supported people's health and care needs.

The inspector found that people were provided with a varied diet which met their needs, healthcare was supported by the staff and people were provided with treatment following consultations.

Residents were also fully involved in making decisions about their care and were supported by staff who were "kind and caring" in a considerate and respectful manner.

The staff were praised for being knowledgeable on people's individual needs and the complaints process was managed effectively, with those who use the service complimenting staff on their care.

There were systems in place to monitor the quality and safety of the service being provided, said the report.

A spokesman for Oakleigh Residential Home said about the report: "In response to the recent CQC report, we feel extremely disappointed to receive a requires improvement in one section of the inspection and feel that the focus of an overall good report may be overlooked.

"Oakleigh prides itself on providing good quality care for all our residents. We have continuously received excellent positive feed back from residents and families.

"Oakleigh has always received a good outcome on the CQC rating.

"As mentioned in the report regarding the bedroom door locks for the residents, the report also mentions that residents signed a declaration opting not to have a bedroom key therefore there would have been no risk to resident safety.

"CQC recommended that appropriate locks should be fitted if required, which we will do. Oakleigh places the care and safety of our residents with utmost importance and priority.

"The management team would like to thank all the staff for working tirelessly and going above and beyond to provide excellent care to all of our residents, achieving an overall good CQC rating."

Read more from the original source:
This is how care home near Swadlincote got on when it was inspected - Derbyshire Live

Gripping the deadly snake behind its jaws, Fabiola de Souza massages its venom glands to squeeze out drops that will save lives around Brazil where thousands of people are bitten every year.

De Souza and her colleagues at the Butantan Institute in Sao Paulo harvest the toxin from hundreds of snakes kept in captivity to produce antivenom.

It is distributed by the health ministry to medical facilities across the country.

Dozens of poisonous snake species, including the jararaca, thrive in Brazils hot and humid climate.

Nearly 29,000 people were bitten in 2018 and more than 100 died, official figures show.

States with the highest rates of snakebite were in the vast and remote Amazon basin where it can take hours to reach a hospital stocked with antivenom.

Venom is extracted from each snake once a month in a delicate and potentially dangerous process.

Using a hooked stick, de Souza carefully lifts one of the slithering creatures out of its plastic box and maneuvers it into a drum of carbon dioxide.

Within minutes the reptile is asleep.

Its less stress for the animal, de Souza explains.

The snake is then placed on a stainless steel bench in the room where the temperature hovers around 27 degrees Celsius (80 degrees Fahrenheit).

De Souza has a few minutes to safely extract venom before the snake begins to stir.

Its important to have fear because when people have fear they are careful, she says.

- Antivenom crisis -

The snakes are fed a diet of rats and mice that are raised at the leafy institute and killed before being served up once a month.

After milking the snake, de Souza records its weight and length before placing it back in its container.

The antivenom is made by injecting small amounts of the poison into horses -- kept by Butantan on a farm -- to trigger an immune response that produces toxin-attacking antibodies.

Blood is later extracted from the hoofed animals and the antibodies harvested to create a serum that will be administered to snakebite victims who might otherwise die.

Butantan project manager Fan Hui Wen, a Brazilian, says the institute currently makes all of the countrys antivenom -- around 250,000 10-15 milliliter vials per year.

Brazil also donates small quantities of antivenom to several countries in Latin America.

There are now plans to sell the life-saving serum abroad to help relieve a global shortage, particularly in Africa.

About 5.4 million people are estimated to be bitten by snakes every year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Between 81,000 and 138,000 die, while many more suffer amputations and other permanent disabilities as a result of the toxin.

To cut the number of deaths and injuries, WHO unveiled a plan earlier this year that includes boosting production of quality antivenoms.

Brazil is part of the strategy. It could begin to export antivenom as early as next year, Wen says.

There is interest for Butantan to also supply other countries due to the global crisis of antivenom production, she says.

Read the rest here:
Deadly life saver? Snake venom used to save lives in Brazil - Hindustan Times

If you have ever been on a diet, you know the pure vulnerability of getting weighed at the doctors office. Standing on that old metal scale with your shoes off, you might avert your eyes, as if that would prevent the nurse from saying the number out loud as they write it down. But what if weight did not play such an active role in determining your health?

On this edition of Embodied host Anita Rao examines 'The Health At Every Size Movement' with Christy Harrison, anti-diet registered dietitian, nutritionist and certified intuitive eating counselor, Dr. Louise Metz, and Mirna Valerio, former teacher-turned-sponsored athlete.

Some of the research presented in this show challenges a lot of what we have been told about health and our bodies...possibly even what you have heard from your medical provider. We invite you to listen with an open mind. Linked at the end of this page are studies referenced in the show. This conversation is not a substitute for personal medical advice.

On todays episode of our ongoing series Embodied: Sex Relationships and Your Health, we deconstruct diet culture by examining the holes in the science which props it up. The medical field has puzzled over the obesity epidemic for years with little progress. According to a growing field of doctors and health practitioners, weight is not the end-all-be-all indicator of health. Data shows that a higher body weight is correlated with diseases like osteoarthritis, cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes, but correlation does not imply causation.

History of Diet Culture

Christy Harrison is an anti-diet registered dietitian, nutritionist and certified intuitive eating counselor. After spending much of her life engaged in disordered eating, she found her way out of diet culture. She calls it The Life Thief and defines it as a system of beliefs that worships thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue; promotes weight loss as a means of attaining higher moral and health status; demonizes certain foods and food groups and ways of eating while elevating others; and oppresses people who don't match up with its supposed picture of health and well-being.

In her forthcoming book, Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating (Little, Brown Spark/2019), she traces diet cultures history as far back as ancient Greece and the societys moralistic arguments against fatness.

This was because of the belief system that ancient Greeks had about balance and moderation and all things being seen as a virtue, she says. So fatness was seen as an imbalance to be, quote unquote, corrected.

Though that perspective fell out of vogue for centuries after the fall of Rome, it began to reemerge in the mid-19th century culture, still long before the medical world propagated weight stigma.

Ideas about the value of different bodies and of different people was really in the foreground and that started to lead to a demonization of fatness, she says. Early evolutionary biologists who are working around [the turn of the 19th century] started to point to fatness as a mark of, quote unquote, evolutionary inferiority because people who had more fat on their bodies were supposedly women and people of color and groups that were being demonized at the time.

Harrison says the societal association of fatness with disenfranchised groups like women and people of color attributed to the convergence of weight stigma and medicine. As patients increasingly demanded to be weighed by their doctors and be put on diets, medical professionals bent to their demands. She also points to the emerging life insurance industry as a factor in medicalizing weight stigma.

The life insurance industry, of course, is geared towards making money and making sure that they're having people in their insurance pool who are going to live the longest. And so they're doing this research to determine who's a bigger risk. And they found from their early research in wealthy, white middle-aged men that it seemed to be the larger-bodied men were dying sooner. And so they started to relay this information to doctors. They started to kind of coalesce behind a campaign of telling people not to be fat and having people lose weight as a way of supposedly reducing health risks. The risks are really it was about reducing monetary risks from the insurance industry.

The Obesity Epidemic

The research these early insurance companies conducted relied on measuring body mass index, or BMI. The scale categorizes people as underweight, normal or healthy weight, overweight or obese. BMI is a persons weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in meters. It was developed in the 1830s by an astronomer as a statistical exercise.

Dr. Louise Metz says it is a problematic way to categorize health. She is a board-certified internal medicine physician specializing in eating disorders and gender-related care. She founded Mosaic Comprehensive Care in Chapel Hill, and it is a weight-inclusive health center.

[BMI] was designed for populations, not for individuals, and was not designed to define health in any way. And then moving on later to the modern age, it was used to begin to define health somewhere in the 1900s, Metz says. And then later on in the late 90s, what we found is that these arbitrary categories for BMI were suddenly changed. So the definitions of obesity and overweight were suddenly decreased and 29 million people suddenly became quote, overweight or obese overnight. And these changes really were not based in any research that shows that there was a direct link between these BMI categories and health.

[BMI] was designed for populations, not for individuals, and was not designed to define health in any way.

The measure is still used today to track changing body weight at a national level. Medical professionals and insurance companies use BMI as a measure of a persons health. Harrison says this contributed to the declaration of an obesity epidemic.

Many other researchers who are in the so-called field of obesity research are financed and funded by the pharmaceutical industry, [and] the pharmaceutical industry [is funded] by the diet industry, Harrison says. Many of them have their own diet plans and programs that they are selling and have this financing that's coming from people with a vested interest in making Americans fear weight gain and think that their body size is a problem.

Weight and Health: Correlation vs. Causation

Still, the CDC links higher body weight to a range of health consequences like high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease and osteoarthritis. There is ample evidence that weight and these health consequences are correlated, but Harrison and Metz caution against implicating weight alone.

We don't have proof that it's the body size causing these health conditions. So there are several other mediators of that. So one could be cardiovascular fitness. We have some data to show that that could be a mediator between body size and health, Metz says. There's one study that looked at this and found that in people who have low cardiovascular fitness levels, mortality rates were higher with higher BMIs. But [in] individuals who had higher cardiovascular fitness, we found that the mortality rates evened out across body size and that in fact, people who are quote overweight or obese and were active cardiovascularly had lower mortality rates in those with a normal BMI who were inactive.

For Type 2 diabetes, a disease widely believed to be preventable by avoiding weight gain, Metz says medical professionals are asking the wrong questions.

There are assumptions behind those questions, and that it is likely not the body size that is causing diabetes again, but there may be other mediators like genetics. So someone might be predisposed to have a higher body weight and have diabetes. And someone might be exposed to chronic dieting and weight cycling As well as weight stigma [that] are increasing the risk of conditions like diabetes.

Why Diets Dont Work

Harrison, Metz and any promoter of the Health At Every Size (HAES) movement will tell you that diets do not work. They are not designed to result in long-term weight loss, but instead trap people in cycles of weight fluctuation. This process is called weight-cycling, and there is evidence that it adversely affects health.

Weight-cycling is this repeated cycle of weight loss and regain that people undergo when they try to intentionally lose weight, Harrison says. And we see in the research that up to 98% of the time when people embark on weight loss efforts, they end up regaining all the weight they lost within five years, if not more. In fact, up to two thirds of people who embark on weight loss efforts may regained more weight than they lost.

Up to 98% of the time when people embark on weight loss efforts, they end up regaining all the weight they lost within five years, if not more.

People in larger bodies get started on this weight-cycling sometimes as early as childhood. A lifetime of dieting, HAES practitioners argue, contributes to poor health. Our bodies are not designed to diet, and Harrison has an explanation as to why the vast majority of people gain back the weight they lost and sometimes more.

Our bodies are wired to resist starvation. And they have all kinds of biological mechanisms that kick in in a situation of lack of food, right, because the body perceives that as famine, she explains. And so it will do things like turn down your fullness hormones so that you keep eating longer in the presence of food, ramp up your hunger hormones so that you're more likely to seek out food, turn down your body temperature so that you're not burning as much energy, reduce your reproductive function because that requires energy.

There's a million things, little things that your body does to help you survive in a situation of lack of food.

To counteract this, Metz never recommends intentional weight loss to her patients. From the HAES perspective, it is more important to focus on things like metabolic levels and other vital signs. As part of the weight-inclusive model at Mosaic, patients are not routinely weighed. If deemed necessary, like in adolescent growth or prescribing weight-determined medication, practitioners will privately weigh the patient and turn the face of the scale away if the patient does not wish to know their weight.

Weight change could be a symptom, and Metz acknowledges its importance when patients bring it to her attention. But overall, she references HAES research in justifying the mostly weight-neutral approach at her practice.

[The] study looked at women who were quote overweight or obese and assigned them either to a diet routine/diet plan or a non-diet Health at Every Size approach. And what they found in these two groups [is] that initially, at the six-month follow-up that they did see improvements in blood pressure, high cholesterol and an increase in engaging and exercise behaviors among both groups, she says. And they saw that weight went down in a diet group. But then if you followed them out to two years, we found that the folks in the diet group actually had all of those numbers revert back to their baseline, and they had no sustained health benefits from engaging in the diet. But in the non-diet group, we found that at two years, they had sustained improved health outcomes across the board, but no change in their weight.

Navigating Diet Culture as a Fat Athlete

Not everyone has access to a HAES practitioner. For people in larger bodies, the weight stigma baked into the medical field can prevent their doctors from seeing past their size and addressing underlying issues.

Mirna Valerio has experienced that firsthand. She is a former teacher-turned-sponsored athlete who runs marathons and ultramarathons. She gained some celebrity in the running community as a large black woman and avid trail runner. Even though she has been running regularly for over a decade, some people still question her validity as an athlete. Her book A Beautiful Work In Progress (Grand Harbor Press/2017) traces her rise as an avid marathon and ultramarathon runner.

Please do not ask me to exercise or to lose weight, she writes on her doctors intake forms. I'm a very, very active person. I run marathons and I work out four to six days a week. I know I'm overweight and I've been working at slow and permanent weight loss for the past five years. Please actually read my chart before you start talking about these things. I would highly appreciate it.

It works for her now, she says. Prefacing her appointments with that note will get most doctors to address her health concerns beyond weight. Still, people on the street question her health.

I'm fat. You don't need to tell me. You don't need to tell me with your body language, you don't need to tell me explicitly or implicitly, I already know that. So it doesn't help me to keep pointing that out, whether I'm out on the trail, whether I'm out on the road, whether I'm just trying to sit in and be me and exist in this world as I am.

She has not weighed herself in years, but her body size has stayed about the same since she started running seriously.

Metz says everyone can take this HAES approach to their own doctors, like Valerio did.

If you're going to your doctor, one thing is that you do not have to be weighed. It is your right to decline to be weighed, she says. And another helpful quote that we learned from Raegan Chastain she will say that if the doctor is recommending weight loss for a condition that you have and you don't think it's appropriate, you can ask Well, what would you recommend for someone in a smaller body? What testing or treatment would you recommend for someone who's thin?

On this edition of our recurring series Embodied: Sex, Relationships and Your Health, host Anita Rao talks with Harrison, Metz and Valerio about diet culture and the stigma larger-bodied people face from the examining room to the running trail.

Continued scholarly reading:

Mortality rates by BMIReview articles that summarize the literatureWeight and correlation with metabolic profilesWeight bias in healthcareCardiorespiratory fitness as a mediator of health

Read more:
Embodied: Deconstructing Diet Culture And The Science Behind It - WUNC

Bruce Chadwick lectures on history and film at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He also teaches writing at New Jersey City University. He holds his PhD from Rutgers and was a former editor for the New York Daily News. Mr. Chadwick can be reached atbchadwick@njcu.edu.

One of the first photos you see in Renee Taylors delightful play about dieting is a black and white picture of her as a chubby kid in New York in the late 1940s. In hundreds of subsequent photos and videos, Taylor, the unforgettable mom of Fran Drescher in the hit TV seriesThe Nanny,tells the story of her life and all the diets she has been on, real and crank, medical and fanciful. Its about caloric food you can bake and a LOT of chocolate cake.

Her story is told in her engaging one woman show,My Life on a Diet,that just opened at the George Street Playhouse, in New Brunswick, N.J. The play is the story of her career in show business, marriage (53 years) to actor/writer Joe Bologna and a world ofcalories. As she says, its a story of her highs and lows, on and off the scale.

In her story, told as she sits at a desk in her home, she tells the rather remarkable tale of all the famous celebrities she knew as friends and lovers. Each has a number of anecdotes attached. Lovers included brilliant off-color comic Lenny Bruce, who overdosed during his relationship to her, and friends Barbra Streisand and, most importantly, Marilyn Monroe.

She met most accidentally.

Taylor enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Acting School in New York in the 1950s to become a performer. Sitting in class with her was Marilyn Monroe, who was just becoming famous. Taylor had no qualms in befriending Monroe and Monroe saw in her a level headed, down to earth friend that she desperately needed. The two hit off right away and remained pals for years.

Taylor rose from bit movie player to c-star of some movies and became a television star in several shows and thenThe Nanny. Through it all, she constantly a waged war against weight, fighting all the way to keep it down, and often failing. The play starts off as a standard Hollywood story but as it goes on you feel real empathy for her and her waistline combat.

Renee had personal struggles, too. She dated a lot of men before meeting Bologna, and they had a tempestuous, marriage counselor filled marriage. Her good friend Marilyn died young of an overdose of pills. Lenny Bruce overdosed, too. You begin to see Taylor as just like any other human being, with lots of troubles, grieving over the losses of friends as we all have, and not just a glitzy Hollywood star. Its a humanity that develops right through the end of the show and makes her lovable.

Oh, the endless diets. They are funny. She makes up celebrity diets and recounts tales of famous people she met who went crazy over diets, such as Jackie Kenneys sister, rail-thin Princess Lee Radziwell. The woman walked up to a gourmet delight buffet table an ate three little carrots for dinner. I leaned over and said to her, oh, such overeating

There was 40s box office Queen Joan Crawford, whom she met with her slightly nutty mother Freida. Mom told Joan she had to work harder at body cleansing diets to save her health and Crawford, with a long nod, said Im doing that.

Taylors story is familiar to any one who has been on a diet. She always weighed herself after getting up andbeforebreakfast. I also fixed the scale before I got on it, she laughed.

You have to admire her for battling against her weight and remaining sane in Hollywood over such a long time. We all know what a crazy life show people have too much eating and drinking, drugs, love affair, on and off employment, shrinks, always waiting for the next job. What do you do? You eat.

The play is warm and loving. It is a memoir of sorts with her as the center. It is not a drama or high comedy or sprawling spectacle, either, but it is good as good as a big, calorie ridden holiday dinner, with a big dessert cake, please large slice.

PRODUCTION: The play is produced by the George Street Playhouse. It is written by Taylor and Joe Bologna, and directed by Bologna. Sets and Lighting: Harry Feiner, Projections: Michal Redman, Costumes: Pol Atteu, Sound: Christopher Bond.The show runs through December 15.

Read more here:
A Concise History of Diets through Life and a Lot of Show Biz Spice - History News Network (HNN)